Today in Labor History May 16, 1918: Congress passed the Sedition Act against radicals and pacifists, leading to the arrest, imprisonment, execution and deportation of dozens of unionists, anarchists and communists. The law forbade the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive” language about the U.S. government, its flag, or it military. The mainstream press supported the act, despite the significant limitations it imposed on free speech and of press freedom. In June, 1918, the government arrested Eugene Debs for violating the act by undermining the government’s conscription efforts. He served 18 months in prison. Congress repealed the act in 1920, since world War I had ended. However, Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, lobbied for a peacetime version of it. Additionally, he continued to round up labor activists, communists and anarchist for seditious behavior, particularly Wobblies, or members of the IWW. For example, they convicted Marie Equi for giving a speech at the IWW hall in Portland, Oregon after WWI had ended.

Grow #flowers for peace, not hate.

Burgundy #CallaLilies

#conscientiousobjector #peace #antiwar

May 15 is International Conscientious Objectors Day

https://nationaltoday.com/international-conscientious-objectors-day/?emci=3dddf567-5a30-f011-8b3d-6045bded8cca&emdi=987f8cde-e930-f011-8b3d-6045bded8cca&ceid=14799567#:~:text=International%20Conscientious%20Objectors%20Day%20is%20observed%20globally%20on,the%20refusal%20to%20participate%20in%20the%20military%20structure.

Today in Labor History May 14, 1970: State police confronted anti-war demonstrators at Jackson State University, Mississippi. Shortly after midnight, they opened fire, killing two African-American students and wounding twelve others. No cops were ever arrested or indicted. This occurred eleven days after the massacre at Kent State. A repeat seems eminent today, with the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses and the violent assaults against them by police and Zionist vigilantes, and the calls by several politicians for the National Guards, and Donald Trump’s calls for student protesters to be deported.

Today in Labor History May 14, 1940: Emma Goldman (1869-1940) died in Toronto, at the age of 70. She had been raising money for anti-Franco forces in Spain. Goldman emigrated to the U.S. from Lithuania in 1885. The Haymarket Affair radicalized her and attracted her to the anarchist movement. She planned the assassination of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, along with her lover Alexander Berkman. However, Frick survived and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. After that, she renounced “propaganda by the deed.” Nevertheless, she continued to agitate for women’s and workers’ rights and for anarchism. And she went to prison numerous times for “inciting to riot” and for distributing information about birth control. She also went to prison in 1917 for “inducing persons not to register” for the draft. When she was released, the U.S. deported her, and 248 other radicals, to Russia. She initially supported the “workers’ revolution.” However, after learning about the violent suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion by the Bolsheviks, she denounced the Soviet Union.

#AntiWar demonstration by the left parties today in #Kolkata, #India.

Krieg beginnt hier...

2025

Annual reminder that Mother’s Day was founded as an anti-war protest—that no more mothers would lose their children to war.
#MothersDay #Peace #AntiWar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day_Proclamation

Today in Labor History May 10, 1887: UMW organizer Ginger Goodwin was born on this date. He was also a socialist and anti-war activist. In 1918, he was murdered by a private cop. His assassination, along with outrage over World War One conscription, inflation, low wages, and censorship of the socialist media, sparked Canada's first General Strike, in Vancouver. Goodwin said that workers of one country should not be employed to kill workers of another country because of capitalist conflict. “War is simply part of the process of Capitalism,” he said. “Big financial interests will reap the victory, no matter how the war ends.”

The Ballad Of Ginger Goodwin

Ginger Goodwin is a name you don't often hear or see.
They don't say a word about him in our country's history.
He was a labour leader and he wouldn't go to war.
"While the army breaks our strikes at home, its strikers I'll fight for."

In Trail back in the summer of 1917.
Ginger fought against conscription even though he was class D.
But when he led a miners' strike to spread the eight hour day
Conscription checked him out again and found he was class A.

Ginger hid from cops and soldiers in the hills near Cumberland.
Miners brought him food and sheltered him, they knew he was their friend.
So the bosses hired special cops when their power was at stake.
Dan Campbell murdered Goodwin at the head of Comox Lake.

The whole damn town of Cumberland turned out for the funeral hike.
Vancouver's workers shut her down for a one day general strike.
Soldiers back from foreign wars then attacked the labour hall.
Both the bosses and the workers knew who caused the Czar's downfall.

You can still see Ginger's grave along the road to Cumberland.
He didn't win no medals and no one understands.
Don't tell me that a hero has to die in foreign lands.
We lost heroes here in labour's wars and they all had dirty hands.

https://youtu.be/GrwUueuW6rs

Today in Labor History May 8, 1970: About 200 construction workers in New York City attacked a crowd of Vietnam war protesters. As a result, over 70 people were injured, including four police officers. Peter Brennan, head of the New York building trades, was honored at the Nixon White House two weeks later, eventually named Secretary of Labor.

Garland‘s #CivilWar, the dystopian #action #thriller about a new #US civil war, remained diffuse, but I still liked it a lot! #Warfare, his new #antiwar/ #war thriller is comparatively focussed & exciting as fuck, without degenerating into a mindless #BlackHawkDown! Worth seeing! #filmsky #movies

THE KENT STATE MASSACRE
It is May 4, 1970 - minutes after the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a peaceful antiwar protest at Kent State University. A horrified Mary Ann Vecchio crouches over the body of Jeffrey Miller.
That’s me on the right with a white arm band. I am watching a freaked-out fellow art student jumping in the blood of Jeffrey Miller.
Four were killed and nine wounded, protesting against the invasion of Cambodia. Days later came massacres at Augusta GA and Jackson State MS.
The shootings at Kent were choreographed at the highest levels of government. Inflammatory comments by President Nixon and Governor Rhodes of Ohio provided a framework for the shootings. Actions reeking of the work of agent provocateurs preceded the murders. In the May 4 protest was an armed FBI agent - photographed holding a gun.
For 55 years, there has been a diligent cover up of the events by politicians of both capitalist parties. KSU has attempted to airbrush the mass anti-war movement of thousands of students out of existence.
Official May 4 commemorations were placed in the hands of Stephanie Danes Smith, a former top official of the CIA - testimony to the moral bankruptcy of the KSU admin. Former “radicals” of SDS, having carved out careers as “experts” and “survivors,” have embraced Smith - a sad testimony to failed ultra-left/liberal politics.
Now, Trump officials are again making inflammatory statements and threatening students with the National Guard. Like Nixon, they believe that deporting, jailing or killing some students will put an end to the anti-war protests. They are doomed to failure.
Those of us who went through the experience of building the Vietnam antiwar movement learned this: when millions of people join in direct action in the streets, we have enormous power.
The most important way to prevent state violence is to build a mass, independent defense of civil liberties.
Together with the Vietnamese people, we defeated the war makers in Southeast Asia.
We can and must do it again.
Stop the assaults on democratic rights!
End the genocide in Gaza!
War machine off campus!
—
#KentState #students #demonstration #protest #freespeech #massacre #vietnam #cambodia #antiwar #solidarity
#May4 #Alewitz #RedSquare

Today in labor history April 28, 1967: Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted to fight in Vietnam. Consequently, he was stripped of his boxing title and threatened with jail. The judge sentenced him, in part, for statements such as this one: “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?”

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/-muhammad-ali-convicted-refusing-vietnam-draft

Kein Bock auf Krieg und Tod? Heraus zum 1. Mai!

2025

it’s a bloody chaos... it’s a raging meat grinder that grinds everyone up...
a riot in #krasnodar highlights the russian army’s desertion problem... https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/04/24/a-raging-meat-grinder
#russiandeserters #antiwar #russia @meduza_en

#MICHIGAN: #ALERT

FBI fascists and local oinkers raided the homes of #UniversityOfMichigan #PalestinianRightsActvists in #AnnArbor, #Ipsilante, and Canton on Wednesday.

The targets of the raids participated in campus nonviolent #antiwar protests.

Disgrace to the #queer community , traitor to humanity and #zionazi, Attorney General #DanaNessel, claims they're part of a 'vandalism investigation' (#wtf?)

The CouncilOnAmericanIslamicRelations #CAIR : 'Peaceful dissent is NOT a crime'

No search warrant was provided. Trigger warning for #PTSD victims of police violence. Please take care .

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p4hbf4KPLpk (video provided by the #TAHRIRCoalition and #DemocracyNow)

(SOURCE for story: DemocracyNow)

#ProtestIsNOTACrime #FreeFreePalestine

Today in Labor History April 22, 1996: Peace activists Tom & Donna Howard-Hastings celebrated Earth Day 1996 by cutting down three power poles in Clam Lake, Wisconsin, preventing the launch of the U.S. Navy's first-strike nuclear submarine. They stapled an indictment against nuclear war to one of the poles and signed it "with disarming love, Tom & Donna." The district attorney charged them with criminal damage to property and sabotage. However, a jury found them not guilty of sabotage. This was just the fourth time in 16 years that members of the Plowshares antinuclear movement were acquitted of such charges. From 1980-1995, there had been 57 trials of antinuclear activists on sabotage charges. In northern Wisconsin, these direct actions focused on Extremely Low-Frequency transmitters, known as ELF, used to communicate with submerged nuclear submarines.

#IndependentNews
#AntiWar
@palestine

Journalist and anti war activist Dave DeCamp from Antiwar.com, also has a YouTube channel. Very useful if you don't have time to read the news and you like independent press, away from corporate media propaganda. This is it, hope you like it:

https://www.youtube.com/@antiwarnews